The Edge of Light (Warrior Kings)

by Joan Wolf

  He smiled up at her engagingly and offered the biggest treat he could think of. “Perhaps tomorrow you can come hunting with me and Ethelred.”

  “We shall see,” she said. “But I thank you for inviting me.”

  “If we get to go hunting, that is,” he muttered, following her across the floor toward the clothes chest. “Bother Ethelbald and his rebellion!”

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  The talk in the royal hall was only of Ethelbald’s rebellion, and soon the ealdormen and chief thanes of the shires east of Selwood began to pour into Winchester in order to take counsel with the king.

  Alfred discovered that one of the causes of the rebellion was his father’s marriage to Judith.

  “But Judith is nice!” Alfred protested to Ethelred when he first learned this upsetting news. “Why should Ethelbald be against her?” He thought of something further. “She is Charlemagne’s great-granddaughter, Ethelred. I heard that is partly why Father married her, to link our line to the line of Charlemagne.”

  “Ethelbald’s objection has to do with Judith’s being crowned and anointed Queen of Wessex when she married Father,” Ethelred explained. “No queen has ever been anointed before, Alfred; not in Wessex and not in the empire. Anointing is for kings, not for queens. In fact, none of the West Saxon thanes is pleased about the anointing. We do not have queens in Wessex. Mother was the king’s wife; she was never called queen.”

  “Judith’s mother is called queen,” Alfred said.

  “That is the way of the Franks. It is not our way.”

  Alfred brightened. “Perhaps Father can send Judith home. She would like that.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t think she is very happy here, Ethelred. She doesn’t speak our language and she is so far away from her home. ...”

  But Ethelred was shaking his head. “Marriage is for life, Alfred. Father cannot send Judith home.”

  “Oh.”

  “Father has sent for Ethelbald to come to Winchester to parley,” Ethelred said next.

  Alfred was surprised. “Will he come?” he asked after a moment. “Everybody is so angry with him here.”

  “No one knows what he will do,” Ethelred said.

  Alfred’s fair brows were drawn together. “I cannot remember Ethelbald,” he confessed.

  “He was at your christening.” Ethelred ruffled his little brother’s hair. “But I suppose you cannot remember that.”

  Alfred pulled away from his brother’s hand. “Of course I cannot remember that!” He stared at Ethelred in outrage. “I was only a baby!”

  “That is true,” Ethelred replied gravely. “But that is probably the only time you have ever met Ethelbald. He has always lived with his foster father in the west.”

  “Ethelred, why did Ethelbald have a foster father?” This was a question that had been puzzling Alfred for several days. “None of the rest of us had a foster father. We all stayed at home with our own father. Why was Ethelbald sent away?”

  “When they were children, Atheistan and Ethelbald were at constant odds with each other,” Ethelred replied. “Ethelbald resented the fact that Atheistan was Father’s heir even though he was not Mother’s son but the son of a concubine. Eventually, to keep the peace, Father sent both Atheistan and Ethelbald to be fostered. That is why Ethelbald was reared by Eahlstan.”

  “Oh.” Alfred’s next question introduced a new thought, “Does Ethelbald look like me?”

  “No. He looks like our grandfather, King Egbert. Father always said that of all his children it was only Ethelbald who had inherited the famous coloring of the West Saxon royal house.”

  “I look like Mother,” Alfred said dismally.

  “You are a lucky boy to look like Mother,” Ethelred said. “She was a very lovely lady,”

  “She was a girl.”

  Ethelred’s mouth twitched. “True. But you do not look like a girl, little brother.”

  “They said in Rome that I looked like a little angel.” Alfred sounded utterly disgusted.

  Ethelred coughed. “Angels are boys,” he said after a minute.

  Alfred brightened. “That is true.”

  “Perhaps you will have a chance to see Ethelbald soon,” Ethelred said. “Father has sent a messenger to Sherborne. We must wait for the reply.”

  * * * *

  The answer came more quickly than anyone had expected. Four days after the king’s messenger had departed, Ethelbald himself came riding into Winchester, Alfred had been returning from Mass in the minster when the party from Sherborne arrived, and he saw his brother as Ethelbald dismounted from his great bay stallion in the courtyard.

  His first thought was that Ethelbald was big. Bigger than Ethelred. Bigger than Alfred’s father. He was bareheaded, with a blue headband holding his shoulder-length hair off his face. And his hair was the color of moonlight.

  Alfred watched with pounding heart as his brother, flanked by eight of his thanes, strode up the steps of the royal hall to the great door and disappeared.

  Two hours later, the king sent for his three youngest sons and told them of his decision.

  “Father, you’re mad!” Ethelbert was white with outrage. “You cannot give in to him like this.”

  “My mind is made up.” The king’s usually gentle face was set like granite. “I will resign the greater part of Wessex to Ethelbald and take up the rule in Kent.”

  Alfred looked worriedly from his father’s face to his brothers’, then back to his father’s again.

  “Kent and the rest of the shires won for Wessex by our grandfather are but a subkingdom. The rule of Kent is traditionally given to the heir,” Ethelbert was saying. “It will be humiliating for you to become a subking under the rule of your own son, Father!”

  Ethelwulf closed his eyes for the briefest of seconds. Alfred jumped to his feet and went to the table in the corner to pour his father a cup of mead. There was silence in the room as he carried it carefully across the floor to the king’s chair. Ethelwulf smiled at his youngest and accepted the mead.

  “Listen, my sons,” he said after he had taken a drink from the goblet, and Alfred strained to understand what had caused his father to do such a strange thing as relinquishing his kingdom. “I have been King of Wessex for nigh on eighteen years,” Ethelwulf said, “and before that I ruled Kent for my own father. For all those years I have ever done what was best for the kingdom, best for the people. We face now perhaps the greatest threat to civilization ever seen in England. The cruel and pagan Danish hordes sweep down on our coasts and harry our people, as the wolf does the unprotected sheep. It is the time for a young king; it is the time for a warrior. Ethelbald is both those things.”

  “He is a heartless, ruthless bastard.”

  Alfred stared in horror at Ethelbert. Even his brother’s lips were white-looking.

  But Ethelwulf was not angry. “Your brother has ever reminded me of my own father,” he said in reply, looking not at his sons but at the golden mead in the gold-engraved cup he held. “He looks like my father, and he is like him in character as well. He was a hard man, Egbert of Wessex, and ruthless. But none can deny that he was a great king,”

  Alfred could not understand. “But, Father . . . if Ethelbald is bad, how can he be like Grandfather, who was a great king?”

  “I have never said Ethelbald is bad, Alfred,” Ethelwulf answered. “He is ambitious. So was my father. So was Cerdic, the first king of our line, and Ceawlin, and Ine ... all the great kings of Wessex.” He looked from Alfred to Ethelbert and then to Ethelred. “Ethelbald is perhaps not the king I would choose if we were at peace. Peace demands virtues he does not possess. But we are not at peace, and I think he is the man to deal with the Danes. He fought with me at Aclea, remember. I have seen Ethelbald in battle, and there can be no doubt that he is a warrior.”

  Ethelbert made a movement as if he would protest, but the king held up his hand. “I do this for the kingdom,” Ethelwulf said. “Remember that, my sons, if ever you come to r
ule. A true king is one who ever sets the good of the kingdom above his own personal ambition.”

  “Ethelbald will never do that,” said Ethelred bitterly.

  Alfred took a step closer to Ethelred and looked, wide-eyed, into his brother’s face.

  “Perhaps not,” Ethelwulf answered his son. “But I am yet the sworn and consecrated king, and that is what I intend to do. I will not have this country torn apart by civil war.”

  “There will be no war, Father.” Ethelbert dropped to his knees and clutched his father’s arm in his passion. We will drive him out, him and all his west-country followers!” The blue eyes he raised to Ethelwulf were fiercely bright.

  “No, Ethelbert.” Alfred had never heard his father speak in such a voice. He took another step closer to Ethelred.

  “I am determined,” the old king continued slowly and with emphasis. “I shall resign the kingdom to Ethelbald. But I have also made an agreement with him that when I die, you are to reign after me in Kent. And if he should die and leave no son old enough to take up the rule, the whole of the kingdom will pass to you. So rest assured, Ethelbert, that I have protected your interests in this matter. Your interests and those of your brothers. The rule of Wessex in this time of peril! must never be given into the keeping of a child.” Now the king looked from one face to the other, making certain he had their absolute attention. “You are to succeed each other, should the necessity arise,” he said. “That I will ask all of you to swear.”

  Ethelbert slowly straightened to his feet and Alfred saw that his expression had altered. Why, Alfred thought, suddenly enlightened, Ethelbert is afraid for his own inheritance! That is why he is so opposed to giving Ethelbald the rule.

  “I see that I cannot dissuade you,” Ethelbert said.

  “You cannot, my son.”

  A small silence fell. Alfred lowered his eyes and stared at the brown wool of his tunic. Ethelred placed a warm, reassuring hand upon his shoulder and he heard his father say, “All will be well, my sons. I promise you, all will be well.”

  * * * *

  The council of West Saxon nobles, the witan, met the following morning at the request of the king. The kings of Wessex had never been autocrats and had always ruled with the guidance of the witan. Yet, as all men knew, some kings were more dominant than others. Ethelwulf had ever been a man willing to submit his plans to the council of ealdormen and thanes and bishops of the West Saxon nobility.

  But this day it was Ethelwulf who prevailed.

  The reasons were two-fold, as Ethelred tried to explain to Alfred after the meeting of the witan, the witenagemot, had broken up. First, Ethelbald was the prince who was most likely to succeed his father anyway. Athelstan’s son was too young, and would be too young for near fifteen more years, to take up the leadership of a country imperiled by the Danes.

  Second, many of the thanes present had fought at Aclea. They knew that though the nominal leader of the West Saxon fyrd for that notable victory against the Danes had been Ethelwulf, the true leader had been his son Ethelbald.

  And so the West Saxon witan had acquiesced in the request of Ethelwulf to name Ethelbald the new King of Wessex.

  There was to be no formal coronation, however. While one anointed king yet lived, the church had refused to anoint another. Ethelbald had not insisted. He had the power; he could wait for the rest.

  Instead of a crowning, Ethelwulf had suggested a feast for all the great nobles of the kingdom. “If we do not hold together, then we will fall to the Danes piecemeal,” he said to counter the objections from some of his stauncher supporters. “Do you want that?”

  No one wanted that, and so the feast went forward. It was held in Winchester two weeks after the witan, giving time for the king’s thanes from west of Selwood to come into the capital.

  On the night of the feast, Ethelwulf and Ethelbald shared the honor of the high seat; two kings, the old and the new, presiding over the packed hall and the cautious festivity.

  Alfred sat between Judith and Ethelred and listened to the scop singing The Battle of Deorham, an ancient battle song of his people.

  “Like a great silver eagle, Ceawlin swoops on his foes,” the harper chanted, and Alfred’s eyes flew to the figure of his eldest brother. Ceawlin, he thought, must have looked like Ethelbald.

  His eyes went next to his own slim, childish arms and legs. He would never look like Ethelbald. He had been told too often that he looked like his mother.

  Suddenly he saw that Ethelbald was beckoning to him. Alfred scrambled to his feet and went to stand before the high seat. He had not yet done more than exchange a simple greeting with this stranger-brother of his.

  “Would you like to bear the mead cup around the hall, youngster?” Ethelbald asked in his deep voice.

  Alfred stared up into his brother’s eyes. They were not blue in color, nor were they green, he thought, but a mix of the two. There was a fractional pause. Ethelbald was offering him a great honor, but Alfred feared that doing such a service for his brother might be a betrayal of his father.

  His father’s gentle voice said, “Do as your brother bids you, my son.” Alfred turned to find Ethelwulf smiling at him, and then he reached his hands up and took the golden mead cup from Ethelbald. Balancing it carefully, he bore it with solemn-faced grace to the man seated on Ethelbald’s left. Slowly Alfred made his way from thane to thane around the hall.

  Alfred had almost finished his task when he felt the first pangs of queasiness begin to stir in his stomach. He should not have eaten the spiced meat, he thought with apprehension. He had known he should not, but it had looked so good. . . .

  Perhaps if he ignored the sickness it would go away.

  He returned the cup to Ethelbald and received a quick, genial smile from his brother’s blue-green eyes. He forced a return smile and walked steadily back to his own bench place. Five minutes later he turned to the brother he loved. “Ethelred,” he said in a low voice, “I don’t feel well. I think I had better go back to the princes’ hall.”

  Ethelred gave him a hard look and said instantly, “I’ll go with you,”

  Alfred nodded and watched as his brother murmured something into their father’s ear. Ethelwulf looked sharply at Alfred, then nodded to Ethelred. Alfred’s weak stomach was well known to his family.

  He was sick in the courtyard, then sick again once they had reached the hall. He felt wretched and weak and horribly inadequate. No one else ever got ill when they ate spiced food. Only him.

  He lay down on one of the hall benches and closed his eyes. He was sweating but he felt very cold. “Are you all right?” Ethelred asked.

  “Yes.” He forced a grin. “I shall be fine, Ethelred. You can go back to the banquet now.” His teeth began to chatter.

  “You’re chilled,” Ethelred said and went to fetch another cover. He asked again, after he had piled all his own blankets on Alfred, “Are you sure you will be all right?”

  “Quite sure,” said Alfred.

  “There is a serving man at the door. Send him to the great hall if you need me.”

  “All right.”

  After Ethelred had left Alfred opened his eyes and lay still, looking at the fire. The great log was smoldering under a heap of ash. The doors of the hall were all shut fast. It was very quiet.

  Ethelred was never sick, Alfred thought. Nor was Ethelbert. And Ethelbald . . . the image of his eldest brother was very clear to Alfred’s mind. He would wager that Ethelbald had never been sick a day in his life.

  What must it be like, he wondered, to be Ethelbald? To be as tall as a tree and as strong as an ox. To be a warrior all men held in awe. Never to have a doubt, a fear. Ethelbald did not look as if he knew the meaning of the word fear.

  Alfred was afraid. He was afraid of being sick. He was afraid of being weak, He was afraid he would never grow to be as strong as his brothers.

  Nausea rose again in his throat. He got to his feet and stumbled once more to the door and out into the cold dark air. It w
as best not to fight the nausea, to get up all that was so upsetting his stomach.

  There was a disgusting taste in his mouth and he felt weak in the knees and very chilled when finally he crept back into the hall and into the nest of blankets on his bench.

  He wanted his mother. Osburgh had been dead for three years, and in many ways she was but a dim memory, but at times like this he remembered vividly the touch of her hand on his forehead, the sound of her soft voice in his ear. Tears came to his eyes and he set his teeth and forced them down again.

  He would not be a baby. He was eight years of age. He would pray to St. Wilfred to make him brave and strong like his brothers. His stomach heaved and he shut his eyes, curled into a small ball, and began to say his prayers.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  Two days after the feast Alfred, along with his father, Judith, and two of his brothers, left Winchester for Kent, where Ethelwulf once more took up the rule he had held for so many years under his own father. The following months went by peaceably enough, although the news from France was distressing. The cities and monasteries of the Seine and the Loire were being burned and plundered by the northmen, and it seemed that Judith’s father, Charles the Bald, was helpless to stop the pagan’s rampage.

  Judith occupied herself that winter with teaching Alfred to read. The Prankish princess had been horrified by the devastation of learning in Wessex, and the burning monasteries in France only spurred her determination to spread the blessing of her own excellent education as best she could. In Alfred she discovered a thirst for learning that not one member of his own family had known existed, and the two young people spent many long winter’s afternoons with their heads happily bent side by side over a book.

  Spring arrived and the coasts of Sussex and Kent were quiet. No long ships, with their terrifying carved prows and their even more terrifying cargoes of Viking warriors, appeared out of the channel mists to disturb the peace of ceorl, thane, or elderly king.

  The coast of western Wessex was not so peaceful. In June, Norse raiders from Ireland came up the Bristol Channel, burning and looting. But Ethelbald was at his manor of Wedmore and immediately called up the Somersetshire fyrd to drive the raiders off. They sailed back across the sea to Dublin and were not seen again that year.